- US regime publicly confesses to two more maritime murders
Source: CBS News
“The U.S. military launched a strike Friday on a boat accused of ferrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, [murdering] two people, according to U.S. Southern Command. No U.S. military forces were harmed in the operation, it said in a statement on X late Friday. U.S. Southern Command shared a video showing a boat floating in the water before an explosion left it in flames. It said it targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes.” (04/25/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-strike-alleged-drug-boat-kills-2-eastern-pacific-military/
- Tunisia: Regime suspends rights group as crackdown widens
Source: ABC News
“Authorities in Tunisia have ordered a one-month suspension of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, one of the oldest rights groups in Africa and the Arab world and part of the National Dialogue Quartet awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, in the latest move raising concerns over a widening crackdown on civil society. The league confirmed the suspension in a statement late Friday, warning that the decision amounted to ‘a serious and arbitrary violation of freedom of association’ and ‘a direct assault’ on one of Tunisia’s key democratic gains. President Kais Saied has often cited foreign funding, which rights groups sometimes rely on, as a threat to Tunisia, using it to fuel a populist narrative and accuse his political opponents and social justice activists of being foreign agents and stirring unrest at home.” (04/25/26)
- The Perils of Goal‑Free War
Source: Independent Institute
by Ivan Eland“When the goal of a war is not clear, it makes any negotiation for achieving a face-saving solution very difficult, especially when the opponent has the strategic advantage. The history of American war has always involved starting and stopping them with an eye toward the election calendar. Unfortunately, the sophisticated Iranians are aware of this fact. They have every incentive to appear reasonable in any negotiations, but stall in an American election year. They understand that Trump and the Republicans will get ever more desperate and be willing to make ever greater concessions to get rid of the martial tar baby as an election nears, in which the Trump administration has already made Republican prospects dim.” (04/25/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/25/perils-goal-free-war/
- Note to Those So Inclined: Please Stop Trying to Kill Donald Trump
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“I’m no pacifist. I fully support violence in immediate self-defense of one’s own life or the lives of innocent others, and you won’t find me shedding any tears for those who, having overseen and ordered non-defensive violence, eventually pay the ultimate price for their misdeeds. BUT! When considering an attempt to kill someone, even if the target arguably deserves to die, the likely consequences of one’s own actions are worth considering. If Donald Trump — or any other president — dies at the hands of an assassin, two such consequences follow as night follows day. First, that president becomes a martyr. His party and/or movement become stronger, not weaker. … Second, the regime that president led opportunistically uses the assassination to expand its police and surveillance powers, and clamp down on dissent. Especially the varieties of dissent associated with the assassin’s persona.” (04/26/26)
- Yes, The Right Has an Omnicause
Source: Persuasion
by Virginia Karnstein“I first encountered the term ‘omnicause’ in a 2024 article by Hadley Freeman. As Freeman puts it, ‘The Omnicause is, simply, every cause you must care about if you’re A Good Progressive rolled into one, because everything in the world is connected.’ Thus, ‘trans rights are connected to Palestinian rights are connected to environmental concerns, and any self-respecting progressive who cares about one has to care about the other two … According to The Omnicause, they’re all magically connected. It’s the fatberg of causes, and the fat gluing them all together is Western narcissism.’ Freeman defines the omnicause as specifically a progressive thing. I disagree. The right — and I have my own personal experience to back this up — is more than capable of having an omnicause, and what we saw from President Trump’s awkward interaction with DoorDash Grandma was an assumption that the MAGA fatberg would hold strong.” (04/24/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/yes-the-right-has-an-omnicause
- Trump lived by the conspiracy theory — now he pays the price
Source: The Hill
by Matt Lewis“A truism of life — right up there with ‘don’t read the comments’ — is that what goes around comes around. Put another way, if you live by the sword, you will eventually die by the sword. For more than a decade, these maxims didn’t seem to apply to President Trump — a man who once strongly suggested that Barack Obama had not been born in America, that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating dogs and cats, just to name a few of his whoppers. … Trump is finally discovering what it’s like to be on the losing end of a conspiracy theory. Trump’s failure to release Epstein files was probably the inflection point. But more recently, the conspiratorial thinking about Trump has metastasized.” (04/24/26)
- The Power of Wealth
Source: Liberalism.org
by Matt Zwolinski“In every political system, wealthy and powerful people will try to write the rules to favor themselves. Liberal democracies should use a range of policy tools to resist elite capture.” (04/24/26)
- Breaking Up “Big Medicine” Won’t Fix What Washington Broke
Source: Town Hall
by Sally C Pipes“Washington is gearing up to crack down on ‘Big Medicine,’ with populist Sens. Elizabeth Warren [D-MA] and Josh Hawley, [R-MO] leading the charge. Over the past decade, America’s healthcare system has become increasingly consolidated, leaving patients with higher prices, fewer choices, and more bureaucratic frustration. But before lawmakers swing a scythe through the healthcare sector, they should ask how it became so consolidated in the first place. Insurance and hospital behemoths didn’t emerge by accident. They’re the predictable result of federal health policy — especially the Affordable Care Act — which has made size a prerequisite for survival. Obamacare’s rules have made it far harder for smaller insurers and independent healthcare providers to compete — while giving larger firms a decisive advantage. The law’s many mandates increase costs, complexity, and financial risk, all of which are easier to absorb at scale.” (04/25/26)
- Incredible Claims
Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon“It is increasingly clear to me that our systems and institutions — of government and technology, of religion and journalism, of justice and enforcement, of economy, of enterprise, even of entertainment — are run on abuse and for the sake of abusers. This convinces me that we are dealing with a culture of abuse, a collective spiritual alignment with abuse know as supremacy — the belief that only some people matter. It’s a sickness that is systemic and social and spiritual more than it is individual, which suggests to me that the remedy will need to be systemic and social and spiritual as well. How to heal from this systemic, social, and spiritual sickness?” (04/25/26)
- There Is No Winning in Iran
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson“There is no victory coming in Iran. There are better and worse possible outcomes. There is no victory coming in Iran because it is an illegal war that will leave our constitutional mechanism, already running rough, further out of balance for a generation, with the presidential warmaking power now entirely untethered from Congress. There is no upside to that. Repairing the damage would take a generation of work by better men and women than we currently have in Washington. On top of this, the Trump administration has effectively conceded sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, a privilege Iran did not previously enjoy regarding the international strait, which is partly in the territorial waters of Oman. … In this war, the United States will lose no battles, but Iran has, in effect, gained territory.” (04/24/26)
- Congress Has Become Almost Totally Irrelevant
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen“More than three weeks ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) agreed to Democratic terms to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), except for its immigration enforcement agencies. That bill has still not become a law, prolonging the longest shutdown of any government agency in history. Nobody has even thought about the DHS shutdown for a while, because President Trump signed executive orders to first pay airport security agents on March 27, and then all other agency personnel on April 3, under the guise of emergency action. It should be said plainly: This is illegal, it has always been illegal, and the precedent it sets pushes Congress, the branch of government with the power of the purse, into total irrelevance.” (04/24/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/04/24/congress-has-become-almost-totally-irrelevant/
- Unattended Baggage, episode 338
Source: Unattended Baggage
“Which button will YOU press?” (04/25/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-338-which-button-will-you
- System Update, 04/25/26
Source: System Update
“LIVE Q&A with Glenn Greenwald: the Iran War, Tucker’s Trump Apology, SPLC Indictment, Cuba, and More.” (04/25/26)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/live-q-and-a-with-glenn-greenwald
- Bulwark Takes, 04/26/26
Source: The Bulwark
“WHCD Shooting: What We Know Now, What’s Next.” (04/26/26)